Water Lane, the last stop on Medieval pilgrimages to Canterbury, is located in the ancestral village that John Passfield shares with the, Elizabethan playwright, Christopher Marlowe. In this novel, the water in the lane becomes a central image in an imaginary pilgrimage that the dying artist recalls as he lies bleeding from a stab wound on the floor of Eleanor Bull's house in Deptford, in May of 1593. Amid the footsteps and murmurs of his murderers, as they rehearse their version of the scuffle, Marlowe's preconscious mind attempts a final structuring of the images of his life. The overt mystery -- who has arranged the death of Christopher Marlowe? --frames the covert mystery: what are the influences that shape, an artist's work?